Gottlieb says the US is likely “much more in this pandemic than we’re picking up on”

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Washington — Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said Sunday that he believes the United States is moving more toward a COVID-19 pandemic driven by the delta variable than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) models. That could mean “hopefully we’ll turn around” in the next two to three weeks, he said.

“We don’t do a lot of testing,” Gottlieb said. “Most of the tests we do are antigen tests that are done at home and go unreported.” “So, I think we’re facing this pandemic much more than we are moving into and hopefully we can get through this pandemic.”

According to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention model, the agency predicts that over the next three weeks, there could be between 90,000 and 800,000 new cases — a huge range. Showing greater variance, the CDC estimates that in the week ending August 14, there will be an average of 10,000 infections per day to more than 100,000. Gottlieb believes that this range is an indication that the agency does not have a good idea of ​​the direction of the outbreak. .

“I think there are more viruses out there than we’re picking up right now,” Gottlieb said. “It’s likely that there will be more people with mild to subclinical infections because more infection occurs in younger people who are less likely to have severe symptoms.”

Gottlieb said the US appears to be about three or four weeks behind the UK, and by using this country as a model, the US could soon turn a corner.

Gottlieb added: “If you look at the UK, in the past seven days it seems to be taking a turn. It’s starting to see a downward trajectory of issues. Now, it’s not clear if that will continue.”

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Gottlieb said the CDC only tracks superinfections when people are hospitalized, but medical professionals “need to understand whether or not vaccinated people develop subclinical and mild infections, and whether they can spread the virus.” , because that will inform the types of infections. The decisions they make.”

“It’s a question I get a lot of from vaccinating people is whether or not they can spread the infection,” Gottlieb said. “Again, we know that they were much less likely to spread infection with the other variants. We don’t know much about these deltas. That’s a question that can be answered, and the CDC should look into this.”

Although the delta variant is more transmissible than previous variants, Gottlieb said, “the characteristics of the virus have not changed to the best of our knowledge.”

“So it’s not more airborne,” Gottlieb said. “It’s not likely to be permeable through the mask. So the mask can still come in handy. I think, though, if you’re going to think about wearing a mask, the quality of the masks is important. So if you can get a KN95 mask or an N95 mask, you’re not going to be able to do that. It will give you more protection.”

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